How do I set a default login for Teams when I have multiple accounts?

Question

How do I set a default login for Teams when I have multiple accounts?

JoToon-3927 20

I have two accounts for Teams. The first is my business account, which I use multiple times a week. The second is for a training contract, which I use once every two months. Every time I open Teams, it opens with the training company log in, no matter how many times I switch to my business account before closing Teams. When I switch, it takes approximately five minutes of staring at a white window before it will let me use Teams again, which is insanely frustrating.

How do I tell Teams to use my business account as the primary account? There's nothing obvious in the settings.

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Answer accepted by question author

Jeanie H 11,935 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Jo Toon,

Please help me follow these instructions. If you're feeling anxious, we can start with small steps. If that doesn't work, we'll clear the cache for other items later.

Please refer to this guide to clear the Teams cache. This guide only deletes the LocalCache. Clear the cache in Teams for Windows

After clearing the cache, please help me restart Teams. Log back in with your business account and your training account. Then, before signing out, switch back and forth between your business accounts, and then quit Teams (note: do not sign out, just quit Teams). After that, reopen Teams and let me know which account it opens.

Thank you so much for your patience and cooperation! I look forward to your response!

Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-30T03:28:40.0366667+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,

Thank you for your feedback! I’ve converted the comment from Jul 29, 2025, 11:37 AM into the official answer. You can now click “Accepted as answer” on that post if it works for you.

Feel free to reach out if you need any further help!

Thanks again for your patience and corporation!

1 additional answer

Your answer

Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-30T03:28:40.0366667+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,

Thank you for your feedback! I’ve converted the comment from Jul 29, 2025, 11:37 AM into the official answer. You can now click “Accepted as answer” on that post if it works for you.

Feel free to reach out if you need any further help!

Thanks again for your patience and corporation!

Answer 1

Jeanie H 11,935 Microsoft External Staff Moderator

Hi @Jo Toon,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Q&A forum.

Option 1: Before exiting Teams, make sure your training contract account is the active one. This can help Teams remember it as the default next time it starts.

Option 2: Editing the Windows Registry (Note: incorrectly can cause serious system problems. Please follow these steps very carefully. If you're not comfortable doing this yourself, consider asking someone with more technical experience for help.) Windows Key + R > regedit > Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\Teams > SkipUpnPrefill (REG_DWORD) 0x00000001 (1) (In the "Value data" field, enter the number 1) > Restart Teams.

Please help me reply to this email with your findings after trying these steps.

Looking forward to your response!

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.

JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-07-25T03:46:59.41+00:00

Thanks Jeanie - can you explain the Regedit comments (from the SkipUpnPrefill). What is this doing to select the correct account? Not doubting that it will select one of the two accounts, just how do I know which one it is selecting?

I always exit Teams in my business account, which is why I don't understand why it can't remember it the next time.
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-25T06:10:42.5666667+00:00
Hi @Jo Toon,

Thank you for your quick response!
This registry key controls whether Teams automatically pre-fills the last used account (UPN = User Principal Name) when launching. Setting it to 1 tells Teams not to auto-fill any account, which forces you to manually choose one at startup. This can help if Teams is persistently defaulting to the wrong account.

SkipUpnPrefill: This is the name of the registry key. It controls whether Teams should automatically pre-fill the User Principal Name (UPN), typically the user's email addres on the sign-in screen.

REG_DWORD: This indicates the data type of the key. A DWORD (32-bit) value is commonly used for binary settings, such as enabling (1) or disabling (0) a feature.

0x00000001 (1) means the setting is enabled. In this case, it means Teams will skip pre-filling the UPN on the sign-in screen, requiring users to manually enter their credentials.

For the situation you always exit Teams with business account but it cannot remember, help me clear team Teams cache and then restart Teams:

%LocalAppData%\Packages\MSTeams_8wekyb3d8bbwe

%LocalAppData%\Packages\Microsoft.AAD.BrokerPlugin_cw5n1h2txyewy

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\OneAuth

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\TokenBroker

%LocalAppData%\Microsoft\IdentityCache

Please help me reply to this email after you clear cache > restart > sign in with your business account > then quit Teams and open again > to see what will be happen.
Also please help me stay sign in your business account, don't signt out, just quit Teams, when you launch the Teams app again, it will open into your business account.

Looking forward to your response! I'm truly appreciate your corporation!

If the answer is helpful, please click "Accept Answer" and kindly upvote it. If you have extra questions about this answer, please click "Comment".

Note: Please follow the steps in our documentation to enable e-mail notifications if you want to receive the related email notification for this thread.
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-28T01:46:53.92+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,

Any updates? I’m still waiting. Feel free to contact me if you have time. Thanks!
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-07-28T01:48:07.0633333+00:00

Hi Jeanie - my apologies - I was away for the weekend. I'm going to give this a go this evening after work and will let you know :-)
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-28T01:53:31.3033333+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to ask you earlier. If you have time, please feel free to update me. I truly appreciate and value it very much!
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-07-28T20:42:29.9+00:00

Hi Jeanie - I'm sorry, I'm a bit of a techno-clutz, so I think I'm going to need a bit more of a step-by-step guide for clearing the cache. For example, am I supposed to delete the whole of MSTeams8wekyb3d8bbwe, or just the sub-folder Local Cache, or one of the sub-files inside - there are lots of folders and files inside Local Cache. I don't want to totally break things by assuming I'm supposed to delete the lot!

If I delete the top folders listed above, then all good - just let me know.

Thanks for your help :-)
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-29T23:47:47.7933333+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,

Do you have any updates? Please let me know when you're free. I'm still waiting.
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-07-30T01:09:26.7833333+00:00

Hi @Jeanie H Sorry for the delay :-) Yes, this seems to have worked - I had a couple of worried moment where it took a while to switch but now it looks like I can close in my business account and then reopen in the same account.Thank you for all your help!
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-07-30T02:52:05.1633333+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,

I'm glad to hear that!

If you think my reply is helpful, could you please use the feedback tool to kindly upvote it and accepted this as answer?

Because other users will also search information in this community. Your valuable vote will definitely also help other users who have similar queries easily to find the correct channel and useful information more quickly.

Also, if you have any futher, please reach out to me. I'm ready to help!

Greatly Appreciate again for your patience and understanding.

I wish you keep safe and wish you all the best in year 2025 as well!
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-07-30T02:57:29.0766667+00:00

Hi @Jeanie H - I'm not entirely sure how to do that - I've clicked the thumb, but when I click on the flag, it only gave me the opportunity to raise a concern. It's the comment on the Jul 29, 2025, 11:37 AM that is the one which worked for me. There doesn't seem to be away to make that comment an answer. (I don't want the mark the first response as the answer because I didn't end up doing any registry editing)
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-08-19T01:48:44.3166667+00:00

Hi @Jeanie H - I've got a further problem with this that I now need your help with.

I've not had to use Teams since I solved the 'wrong login' issue using the solution above.

However, today I tried to access Teams through an invite sent to my business account - i.e. with the account which is permanently logged in. Teams refused to load the meeting because I wasn't logged in to my training account - it just kept on popping up that I needed to sign in to the training account that I wasn't using for the call. I ended up having to go through the web version of Teams because I didn't have time to go through the hideous multi-factor authentication process that the training organisation has set up.

How do I make it so that Teams (a) uses my business account first and foremost AND (b) can cope when I'm not logged in to my training account (particularly if I have to log out of that account just so I can get it to use my business account!!). I shouldn't have to muck about when I want to jump on to a meeting that has been sent to my business account email address!
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-19T06:42:09.0666667+00:00
Hi @Jo Toon,

Please help me follow these steps:

Quit Teams completely.

Press the Windows key + S to open the search bar, type Credential Manager, and select the app from the results.

Navigate to Windows Credentials: In the Credential Manager window, click on Windows Credentials.

Remove Teams Credentials:

Under the Generic Credentials section, look for any entries that include "Microsoft Teams" or "msteams" in their names.

Click on each one to expand it, then click Remove and confirm.

Then, sign back in using your business account.

I’ve received multiple reports about this issue. When users have two accounts in the Microsoft Teams app, one of them often gets stuck in an authentication loop.

For your business account, it’s best to keep it signed in on the Teams desktop app, since the app offers more features. For your training account, you can use Teams on the web, which has fewer features but avoids conflicts.

I understand this is very inconvenient for you and I'm truly sorry for this. If possible, could you help me submit a feature request on the Microsoft Feedback portal – Ideas · Community? This is where Microsoft collects user feedback to improve their products.

It would mean a lot to our community if you could take a moment to contribute. After submitting your feedback, could you please share the link here so other users can vote on it too?

Looking forward to your response!
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-08-19T21:50:02.2366667+00:00

Hmmmm - that was interesting. I made sure I didn't have Teams loaded (I don't have it as an auto-load on Startup), followed your instructions with the generic credentials (there were only two credentials with Teams / msteams).

When I opened Teams, everything was still logged in - it hadn't signed me out of anything.

So I signed out of both accounts and closed Teams completely. No additional credentials manager items appeared, yet when I reopened Teams, I was able to sign in back with my business account without needing to add in my password / MFA. I had to do the password / MFA for the training account.

Is there something else I should have done? I'm on Windows 10 if that makes a difference. Other generic credentials are around my gmail account, MS Office, SSO_POP and something called virtualapp. (No Windows or Certificate-based ones)

Unfortunately, the workaround (app for business account and web for training one) doesn't work - I need the functionality of the app for running the training courses.

I'll go raise an Ideas now and add the link to another comment.
JoToon-3927 20 Reputation points

2025-08-19T22:05:18.2833333+00:00

Link to suggestion in the Ideas: https://feedbackportal.microsoft.com/feedback/idea/7c4d1167-487d-f011-95f2-7c1e52a55eeb

Though I don't have a huge amount of confidence that they'll do anything, given pretty much all of the previous issues I've raised / voted on appear to have been ignored...
Jeanie H 11,935 Reputation points Microsoft External Staff Moderator

2025-08-20T00:20:02.0566667+00:00

Hi @Jo Toon,
I’ve already voted along with you. I’ll follow up on this case regularly, and I’ll proactively update you if there’s any news. I understand that the product team hasn’t responded immediately, and I sincerely apologize for that. However, the fact that they’re releasing new features is a good sign that they’re working hard to improve the product. It’s possible that because they’re handling many products, they’re stretched thin trying to deliver a comprehensive experience for customers. I’ll keep following up, so please rest assured.